


Unasking

by drinkbloodlikewine



Series: Exclusion Theory [4]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Avoidance, Frottage, Hannibal is Hannibal, M/M, Making Out, Paradox and Philosophy, Persistence, Rutting, Smoking, relationships are hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-18 07:12:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2339687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I do not need to be absolved,” Hannibal intones, and finally an exhaustion begins to appear in his voice, cutting the words a little shorter than they otherwise might be. “I carry no weight of sin or misdeed in anything I’ve done.”</p>
<p>Will blinks. He would laugh if it wasn’t such an entirely inappropriate moment to do so.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unasking

**Author's Note:**

> “I would like to understand things better, but I don’t want to understand them perfectly.” ― Douglas Hofstadter

People talked.

When someone once described in a review as “contemptuously punctual” arrived whole minutes late to his classes, looking as though he had hardly slept but somehow no worse for wear, it wasn’t hard to guess why. The who remained a point of contention among the other teaching assistants, and Will was always grateful to hear the wrong names in their smirking whispers. He had finally convinced Hannibal to keep any marks he left hidden beneath his clothes but he still couldn’t hide the flush that lingered hours after in his cheeks or the quick smile that came easier than anyone had seen before.

People would always talk.

They met as often as possible considering the weight of Will’s class schedule and Hannibal’s ever-increasing list of clientele. Clandestine arrangements made via a vague phone call or a note with instructions left before Hannibal departed back to Baltimore the morning after. After-hours rendezvous in Will’s classroom, bent over his desk and fucked so hard that he blushed anytime afterward that he leaned back against it while trying to teach. Rushed midday encounters when a patient canceled, but with Will increasingly convinced that Hannibal was trying to make him late back to class by teasing him for so long with lips and fingers unhurried in their progress over him. Lingering looks across the foyers of university buildings at various professional events, maintaining absolute distance from each other so as not to appear conspicuous.

He loved those nights the most, watching in quiet appreciation as Hannibal cut through the room like a knife. The way he flirted and laughed, bantered and charmed was enviable, winning over the intelligentsia of Baltimore with an ease that Will accepted he’d never have. Will managed small talk on the outskirts, usually with acquaintances already made, and felt a thrill when he noticed Hannibal watching him with something like jealousy. Of course, he pretended not to notice, taking great pains to avoid him and revel as long as possible in the sensation of being so desired. And when they finally arrived in separate cars and met at Will’s apartment door, it was all he could do to stop Hannibal from stripping him bare and taking him right in the hallway.

Will was glad that none of his classmates lived in the old tenement building. It was enormously difficult to unlock his door with Hannibal’s hand down the front of his pants and the other wrapped greedily around his throat.

After they had devoured each other, they lay awake for hours. Hannibal’s carefully cultivated awareness of art and music was something to which Will had never been exposed, and he enjoyed listening to the rumble of Hannibal’s voice through his chest as he spoke at length - and with delightful derision - about the state of most modern art.

In turn, Hannibal listened carefully when Will mentioned his childhood in vague ways, and even seemed interested when Will would talk about fishing with such enthusiasm that he’d sit up in bed, embarrassingly excited as he regaled Hannibal with stories. Will was sure Hannibal didn’t actually care about fly fishing, but he watched, and he listened, and he asked questions.

It mattered. Will mattered.

Hannibal was a fascination to Will, easy to speak to and even easier to fall against in a flurry of words and heat. An endless puzzle in which his sensitivities delighted, a mind like a maze with shadowed corners and winding paths to nowhere in particular.

Will watches him, laid on his belly beside, chin on Hannibal’s shoulder. The amber lights from the street stripe them in gold through the cheap blinds, open to let in the cool night air from the stifling apartment, to let in the voices from the bar beneath them. His eyes are closed, but he doesn’t sleep, and Will watches the precariously perched cigarette between his lips, the way he draws from it without bringing a hand to his lips, the way his throat works when he breathes in deep.

Fingers stretching, Will traces Hannibal’s profile, through the thin sheen of sweat on his brow, down over his nose. He hesitates over the small scar across the bridge, irresistibly curious to work his way through the maze again.

“How did you get this?”

Placid as ever, Hannibal reaches up to withdraw the cigarette, ashing it without opening his eyes into the ashtray that had appeared soon after he started coming by, to replace the beer cans Will normally used.

“There was a fight.”

Will’s brows lift, and he settles his cheek against Hannibal’s shoulder, watching from close. “You don’t seem like the type,” he responds, bemused. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Hannibal replies, pressing the cigarette to Will’s lips and watching as they wrap around it and pull soft, before drawing it back to his own. “I am not.”

The smoke leaves Will’s lips in a slow plume, curling pale across Hannibal’s skin. He considers this seeming dead-end in the maze, but isn’t sure he wants to retrace his steps so soon.

“But things happen,” suggests Will, propping himself up on an elbow to better watch the languid expressions of the man next to him. “Situations that require a response, when we otherwise wouldn’t engage them.”

Hannibal makes a noise of acknowledgement, and Will’s brows lift again, momentarily pleased with his progress.

"Most character-building moments in life - those that leave scars - are born of situations that would have been agreeably avoided. It is why they would us," Hannibal continues. "The question then becomes, is there potential to notice these moments before or as they occur, and in doing so, would we avoid them?"

Will sucks his lower lip between his teeth, pensive. "That's a little intro level, isn't it?" he grins, eyes narrowing just a little. It's a feint, easily caught, and Will knows he's avoided the distraction when the corners of Hannibal's eyes crinkle just a little.

Fingertips twist through the hair on Hannibal's chest and draw out a low, pleased sound, like a great cat, purring. "Would you have wanted to know?" He nods towards Hannibal's nose when the man regards him with a sleepy eye. "That it was coming. Would you have avoided it?"

It's as though he can hear a latch unlock, hinges creaking to allow him deeper still into the labyrinth. Hannibal takes a slow breath, considering his answers.

"This was the culmination of many events," Hannibal responds. "Nothing exists in a vacuum, and certainly time does not. So you ask if I might have, could I choose to do so, avoided the entire series of events that lead to this scar, in particular.”

Will’s breath catches, held in his chest, as he sees the scope widen - a correct path taken, but longer still the journey to reach its center, that shadowed place well-hidden that forms the core of the man across whose chest Will lays sprawled.

“No,” Hannibal finally answers. “Taken to its very origin, despite what unfolded after, I would not relinquish what once I had known for the sake of saving myself the marks I carry.”

The cigarette is extinguished, and Hannibal turns back to draw Will against him, mouths moving together in a kiss that seems particularly gentle in compare to the fire and ardor that normally flares hot between them. He has withdrawn, now, and Will can feel it even as he is held close, a place for them both to rest for now with progress made, but no further seeking to be had this night.

A trauma that Will can taste as though it were his own, an open wound that weeps still despite its apparent age. The scars on Hannibal’s body have been grown into over years, stretched pale and shiny where Will can find them, subtle enough that they must go unnoticed by any who does not so regularly ensconce themselves in the whole of the other. 

He follows the line across Hannibal’s nose with his fingers, letting them fall along a cheek, to find the rise and fall of a hard-hewn cheekbone, a carved jaw, the soft swells of lips that part against his touch. Will leans just a little, head tilted to taste another kiss past his own fingers, eyes close and words emerging before he’s able to stop them.

“It’s only in admitting that something is done for the sake of cruelty that it becomes such,” Will suggests. “An action taken in self-defense, a wolf at hunt, these aren’t acts of horror - no stigma is applied to them by those who do them. It isn’t inherently sadistic unless you intend it to be.”

Hannibal’s eyes open enough to regard him closely. The clock on the wall ticks away seconds that seem to each stretch longer than the one before it, staring into the fathomless black depths of Hannibal’s close attention before he finally answers.

“Do you believe that?”

A hesitation, and Will presses his fingers against Hannibal’s mouth again, to feel his lips shift beneath the touch. “I do.”

“That the intent behind an act changes the nature of the act itself.”

“What the law believes and what I believe are not always the same,” Will admits.

Hannibal hums, tucking Will closer against him, cheek against his hair and broad hands rubbing long lines down his bare back.

“You are attempting to absolve me.”

“Yes. Your resistance says more than you have, entirely.”

“I do not need to be absolved,” Hannibal intones, and finally an exhaustion begins to appear in his voice, cutting the words a little shorter than they otherwise might be. “I carry no weight of sin or misdeed in anything I’ve done.”

Will blinks. He would laugh if it wasn’t such an entirely inappropriate moment to do so.

“In anything?”

“Yes.”

“Then why treat it with shame if you feel no shame about it?”

“Do I treat it as such?” Hannibal responds, and Will feels the man’s hands come to a stop. A misstep here could bring the entire thing down, let alone blockade him from ever reaching deeper. “Or do you regard it as such? There is a difference in not wishing to speak about that which others may regard with horror, and believing that it deserves that reaction. And in your absolution, are you not also freeing those against whom I have acted?”

Will opens his mouth to respond but finds no words forthcoming, an array of information sinking into him, filling and rending him all at once into distraction.

“Were they able to defend their actions, to find no fault in them, then you, too, by your own admission would find no fault in them,” Hannibal murmurs, and in an instant Will is released.

“Hannibal, stop,” he insists, catching the man by his wrist that, with a flourish, is turned neatly free of his grasp. “You haven’t even told me what happened. Anything, actually. You haven’t told me anything about this or yourself or where you come from,” he pauses, lifts a hand as Hannibal tilts his head as if to respond. “I know, Lithuania. That’s not - that’s not helpful, that’s not _you_.”

Sheets tangling around his legs, Will shuffles closer across the bed before Hannibal can stand, feet already on the floor, and Will’s arms drape around his shoulders. He tucks his face against the man’s neck, words punctuated by the brush of his lips across warm skin. “We speak in abstractions. You won’t let me get closer than this - this strange loop we’re stuck in. It feels as though our words are moving somewhere but they’re not, they just wrap back around to the same metatheories and semantics and - hell, Hannibal,” Will swears, resting his forehead against the man’s shoulder. “I don’t know how to stop following the Moebius strip without just tearing it.”

He sits, and rather than fold his legs beneath him, wraps them around Hannibal’s middle, ankles hooked together and arms surrounding his chest.

“I didn’t mean to push.”

The tension does not entirely ease from Hannibal, but he sighs a little, tilting his head to stretch, and leaning back slightly into the surrounding embrace of the younger man against his back. “You did mean to,” he corrects, not ungently, as he rubs Will’s arms. “It was entirely your intention, and you have done so.”

“And if I consider it a necessary push, then it’s a just action rather than an impolite prying,” Will replies, a grin catching the edge of his words. “In theory.”

“In theory, I should push you to this bed and give you a better means to occupy your thoughts than transgression ideology."

Will feigns a dour frown, amusement lighting his eyes to betray him even as Hannibal pivots to avoid the subject to which Will was so close that he could taste it like a wound inside his mouth, irresistible to pry at, to which he knows he’ll return again and again until he knows its origin.

Pushing himself back to prop his shoulders on the headboard, Will finally allows a sly grin to appear. “By laying your own transgressions on me instead? Avoiding the thing by circling back into it,” Will sighs, a burdened tone as he releases Hannibal from the snare of his limbs and flops back to the bed. “Strange loops.”

Hannibal follows the movement and slides between Will’s legs, laying so heavy atop him that Will grunts, his laugh lingering even as they kiss. When Will moves, Hannibal follows, pushing to sit higher, mouths joined and sweat slick between their bodies.

"I do not consider these acts or any others I do as cruel or shameful," Hannibal remarks when they finally part enough to breathe. "Do you? What becomes of a stigmatizing action if the person that performs it is without guilt, but the recipient of that action is shamed by it?"

Will would answer, but he's not given time before Hannibal's hands slide below his hips to squeeze his ass and bring their bodies together. A moan - no stigma here, clearly - and they curl against the other, rubbing hardening lengths to find friction between them. Arms wrapping around Hannibal's neck, leg riding high along his thigh to catch it and push then that much closer together, Will suggests, "Then that person is a victim, and it is is up to the existing rule of law to assume authority in the truth of the transgression."

Hannibal's smile widens a little, and he drives harder down against Will, rutting against him until Will begins to slide down from the headboard laughing. They kiss savagely, a needy joining of lips and tongues and teeth, such as when Will sucks Hannibal's lower lip into his mouth. Bites it. Grins and teases his tongue against it.

"I’m not shamed by this,” Will murmurs when he releases the man’s lip and meets his eyes, a ravenous desire in them, held at bay only by the fingers that Will presses to Hannibal’s mouth, to watch it shift against them, the tug of lips against fingertips and the brush of tongue, strong and soft and hot. “I am - I feel made important, by this. What’s the opposite of guilt - pride?” Will asks, lips parting in sympathy and a soft little sigh as Hannibal draws Will’s fingers deeper still. “I am proud, then, smugly and irredeemably proud, to get to enjoy you like this. That you want to enjoy me, like this.”

Releasing his fingers to seek Will’s mouth instead, Hannibal hums agreement with Will’s conclusions, smile broadening as Will works his hands into Hannibal’s hair and tightens the leg around his waist. Their cocks, pinned between each other’s bellies and the soft material of their underwear, find a firm friction against the other, spines curling to drive their hips together again and again.

Night after night.

Week after week.

Laughing effortless to release the strains that leave spaces in their words, cracks at which Will can’t help but pry. Mouths forming kisses and theories that entertain to distract from the things that remain unspoken. Bodies turned to weaponry to overpower the other, ecstatic and primal, and assure themselves of their own control.

Release found sudden and surprising, skin singing alive and tendons of twined legs and tense fingers twitching in relief, in reassurance for what they do have - this, now - and not what is still obscured. Will pants short, haggard breaths as he spills against his stomach. Hannibal kisses him, as his skin dampens in kind. And unfolding from the jumbled press of body against body, they turn towards each other, Hannibal on his back and pulling Will atop him, an orderly joining of legs and arms to leave no space between them.

Will turns onto his belly, and rests his chin on Hannibal’s shoulder. The night has grown darker, but for the streaks of sulfur-bright streetlights painting rows of gold across them through the blinds. Will watches as Hannibal places a cigarette between his lips, and they spin down breathless from their heights, exactly back to where they began.


End file.
